Waleed Aly

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of human life. About the lives so cheaply lost on MH17. About the anger and grief this tragedy has unleashed. About the sense of sacredness and solemn ceremony that followed it. There’s something cathartic about all this. That we mark this with ritual public grieving tells us that these lives – and therefore our own lives – are sanctified; that their termination is an almost blasphemous violation. On some level this reassures us, which is probably why we pore over news coverage of such events, seizing on small harrowing details and the personal stories of the victims.

But I’ve also been thinking a lot about why it is these lives particularly that have earned such a response. The more I heard journalists and politicians talk about how 37 Australians were no longer with us, the stranger it began to sound. Something of that magnitude happens just about every week on our roads, for instance. In the last week for which we have official data, 29 people were killed this way. The youngest was two. We held no ceremonies, and we had no public mourning of the fact that they, too, were no longer with us.

The more I heard journalists and politicians talk about how 37 Australians were no longer with us, the stranger it began to sound. Something of that magnitude happens just about every week on our roads, for instance.

Why? I don’t ask critically, because I’m as unmoved by the road toll as anyone. But it’s surely worth understanding how it is we decide which deaths matter, and which don't; which ones are galling and tragic, and which ones are mere statistics. We tell ourselves we care about the loss of innocent life as though it’s a cardinal, unwavering principle, but the truth is we rationalise the overwhelming majority of it. What does that tell us about ourselves?

Here, the most obvious counterpoint is the nightmare unfolding in Gaza. As I write this, nearly 600 people – overwhelmingly civilians a third of whom are children – have been killed. By the time this goes to print, that number will be redundant. There’s grief, there’s anger and there’s some international hand-wringing, but nothing that compares with the urgency and rage surrounding MH17, even if there is twice the human cost.

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If you take your cues from social media, on which this comparison is being relentlessly drawn, the reason is simple: Palestinians are not rich Westerners, and so their lives simply don’t matter. No doubt there’s some truth to this: humans are tribal animals, and we’re as tribal in death as we are in life. But it’s not an entirely satisfactory explanation because it comes from people who would likely exempt themselves from this rule. And yet those same people have almost certainly grieved comparatively little over the thousands of South Sudanese killed in the past six months, or the 1.5 million to have been displaced. Should we conclude they value African lives less than Palestinian ones?

It’s not merely a matter of cultural affinity. Consider the Egyptian press, which has wholeheartedly embraced the Israeli offensive. “Sorry Gazans, I cannot support you until you rid yourselves of Hamas,” wrote Adel Nehaman in Al-Watan. He was comprehensively outdone by Al-Ahram’s Azza Sami who tweeted “Thank you Netanyahu, and God give us more men like you to destroy Hamas”. Then she prayed for the deaths of all “Hamas members, and everyone who loves Hamas”. Meanwhile, television presenter Tawfik Okasha urged Egyptians to “forget Gaza”, adding for colour that “Gazans are not men” because they don’t “revolt against Hamas”. That, presumably includes the hospital patients or the kids playing football on the beach who have been bombed in the past week or so.

This is about as thorough a dehumanisation of Gazans as you’ll find anywhere in the world. Israel’s media doesn’t even come close. And this in a country where the Palestinian cause has been a kind of social glue for decades. But that’s what happens when the sanctity of life meets the power of politics. For the Egyptian media – now effectively a propaganda arm of the government – Gaza merely represents a chance to attack the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Hamas emerged. It doesn’t matter who dies. It doesn’t matter how many. What matters is that their lives – and especially their deaths – can be used in the service of the story they are so desperate to tell.

And that, I fear, is a universal principle. It is not merely the death of innocents that moves us, even in very large numbers. It is the circumstances of it that matter. We decide which deaths to mourn, which to ignore, which to celebrate, and which to rationalise on the basis of what story we want them to tell. Palestinian deaths matter more than Sudanese ones if you want to tell a story of Israeli aggression. Israeli deaths matter more than Palestinian ones if you want to tell a story of Hamas terrorism. Asylum seeker deaths at sea matter more than those on land if you want tell a story about people smuggling. But a death in detention trumps all if your story is about government brutality. And a death from starvation matters if you want to tell a story about global inequality – which so few people do. Everyone will insist they’re merely giving innocent human lives their due. And that’s true but only in the most partial sense. These are political stories driven by political commitments.

MH17 allowed us to mourn and to rage because it delivered a story we were well prepared to tell. It’s easy to rage when the plot is one of Russian complicity, roguishness and cover-up. And frankly, Russia deserves the whack it’s getting for its handling of the aftermath. But in my most naive moments I hope for a world where the value of human life is universal enough that we can outrage ourselves; where we can tell the stories we don’t particularly want to; the stories in which we are neither the heroes nor the victims, but the guilty. That’s what we’re asking of Russia. One day someone mourning no less than we are will ask it of us.

Waleed Aly is a Fairfax columnist. He hosts Drive on ABC Radio National and is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.

605 comments so far

It is right that the deaths on board the MH17 are tragic as is the loss of every innocent life in Gaza and in Israel. Let us also not forget the Christians being slaughtered in Mosul and the innocents murdered in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, India, Pakistan, Thailand and Myanmar by religious fundamentalists. It is imperative to value the sanctity of all human life and to seriously question any belief system that justifies the killing of others.

Commenter

Roger Khan

Location

Riverwood

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 12:04AM

Waleed Aly is also unmoved by the slaughter of Christians in the Middle East, because they are not Palestinian. A bit of balance would be nice from this moderate.

Commenter

Rabscallion

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 5:46AM

Frankly, Toney Abbott has moved from telling us who should we care about when they're alive, to who to care about when they're dead. He was devastated by the 4 "pink batt" deaths and felt obligated to run the 5th inquiry to see if he could pin it on Labor.

He was devastated by the "1000 refugee deaths", enough to prevent any solution until he got into power. He wasn't too devastated by their deaths in custody or suicide, but he offered them money to go home and be persecuted, so that's OK.

With this downing of the airplane, he has turned a tragedy into an atrocity and a media event at the same time. Apparently he's on the phone to Moscow every morning, directing Putin as to what to do next. Now we are sending 50 police into a war zone to protect lumps of twisted metal.

Abbott must lie awake, hoping for a war he can send troops to, or even better, another tragedy involving Australians.

With Abbott, its all about politics. He hasn't the foggiest idea about politics, instead he punches his way about in the fog, hoping to connect with "his people" who have determined (95%) of them) they they don't want "Dear Leader", his budget, his treasurer, his chest-thumping military grief, and his belief that all life's problems can be solved with a hammer.

Commenter

Axis

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 5:54AM

If we're going to grow a consciousness, let's look at the 18,000 plus children that die EVERY SINGLE DAY from starvation, worldwide.Waleed, I don't think we could cope pouring grief into every death. The numbers are staggering.

Rabscallion, you call for balance, but I think you just want Waleed to back your "side". This article was balanced, even though the people you want remembered were not mentioned.

Commenter

Bugs

Location

Maariborah

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 6:40AM

We should value human life and the quality of human life. How do we treat the question of overpopulation? If certain countries allow and even encourage overpopulation how should the rest of the world respond? It is projected that India's population will surpass that of China's due to differences in population policy.

Commenter

Good Logic

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 6:51AM

In recent times there have been several people on various forums and even on ABC radio, touting for sympathy for the Palestinians. They usually put historical arguments to attempt to legitimise Islamic hate of the Israelis. If we think back a bit the problems started when people began using suicide bombers to express dissent, now it is firing rockets over borders. I suggest the acceptance of poisonous rhetoric and use of suicide bombers should be resisted. If it is in any way legitimised as a form of protest, it can happen in Australia.I recognise that people are dying, however using the victims of the MH17 crash to highlight the problems in Gaza is pretty sick. If you thjnk about it , 50,000 men were killed flying Lancaster bombers over Germany in WW2 fighting for democracy and liberation of the Jews and other victims of fascism. Because of the Dresden raid, there was not even a memorial to them until recently.The answer for the Palestinians lies in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. I will bet they will never take their problem there. They don't believe in western democracy.

Commenter

adam

Location

yarrawonga

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 6:52AM

So true. Hamas has refused the ceasefires offered and it appears to suit their cause that more innocents die.

Commenter

dexxter

Location

melbourne

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 7:07AM

No Adam,

The problem started when their land was taken away from them and they were forced out of their homes. Would make me kinda angry too.

Commenter

PP

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 7:11AM

@ Axis

What an inane comment.

Commenter

Dtj

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 7:15AM

hi Adam,

I don't want to simplify the complex problems of the Middle East but hatred of Israel by Muslims (and also Christians who were a significant number of those Palestinians who were displaced in 1948) is matched by Israeli hatred of Palestinians.

But I take issue with your statement that Palestinians would never accept Western Democracy.

The last Palestinian election was won by Hamas, and in their respect for Western Democracy, Israel, Australia and the US refused to recognise the result and appeared to have divided West Bank from Gaza and regarded the losing Fattah as the Government.

When the west shows derision for Western Democracy, please don't blame others for doing so.

Similarly, Israel ignores UN Resolutions and even its own Courts (that have ruled against the separation wall). Do you think that it would pay any regard to a decision coming from the Hague?